Always Time To Die

Chapter 8

QUINTRELL RANCH

MONDAY MORNING

THE WRITING WAS IN THE ERRATIC FAINT SCRAWL OF A MAN AT THE END OF HIS strength.

Josh Quintrell wondered who of all the many people the Senator had screwed had finally found a way to get even. Winifred, probably. She heard all the gossip from the hispano community; they feared her as much as they respected her. She'd hated the Senator after she'd found out about his women, and she hadn't known the half of it.

Senator, you were a real piece of work. Which of your secrets was it? You had almost as many of them as women.

Josh didn't want to read about any of it in the headlines. Not until after he was the surviving candidate in the primaries. Not until after the election itself.

The Senator's secrets had been kept for almost a century. Surely Josh could keep them buried for eleven more months.

He closed the Senator's private safe without looking at the gun and the cash, but he did remove the kind of evidence of civic corruption that some cops would have loved to have. The dial spun with a vague humming sound. After a glance at the locked door, Josh stood and went to the corner fireplace. There were only a few small pieces of pifion burning, just enough to give the room a scent of resin. He dropped the Senator's note in, watched it burn, and ground the ash into a smear across the small hearth. He did the same with the other papers.

Obviously, someone knew too much, which meant he couldn't trust anyone local. At the same time, he couldn't afford to make local people suspicious. He'd act like it was business as usual and use an out-of-state accountant to track down the blackmailer.

Until that happened, he had other problems. Carly May was at the head of the list.

Josh unlocked the office door and strode quickly to the end of the house everyone called the Sisters' Suite. He knocked very softly before he opened the door to Sylvia's room. He didn't wait for permission to enter; it was his house now.

As always, Sylvia's body made a slight mound on the hospital bed. As usual, Winifred's chair was drawn close and the pifion fire was blazing. Sylvia's empty black eyes stared into the room from beneath a carefully combed halo of white hair.

Nothing much changed from visit to visit except the seasons beyond the windows and Sylvia herself, becoming more and more ghostlike, translucent. Every week when the doctor visited, he told Josh that he expected Sylvia to be dead.

So far no one had been that lucky.

"Good morning, Aunt Winifred," he said quietly. "How is Mother today?"

"Alive."

Josh bit back a sigh and a curse. Neither would make a difference. Winifred had never liked him. She would go to her grave that way. "Alma said you weren't feeling well."

"I'll live."

"I'm sure you will. Nothing would be the same without you."

Winifred leaned forward, opened a rough pottery jar, and scooped out something that looked-and smelled-like it had been scraped off a barn floor and mixed with rotten fish. Gently she rubbed the greenish goo over Sylvia's withered torso, careful not to disturb the various tubes.

"Your love and devotion have kept her alive," Josh said, trying not to gag on the smell of whatever Winifred had concocted. "We're all grateful for that."

The old woman didn't answer.

Slowly, like a leaf caught in an uncertain eddy, Sylvia's head turned toward the window. It was the only movement she ever made, gradually turning her head to one side or the other. Since her eyes never focused on anything, it was impossible to say why her body made the effort.

"Get out and leave her be," Winifred said, pulling up the blankets again. "She's got pain enough without you."

For a moment Josh's eyes narrowed and his hands flexed. Winifred's insistence that her sister had times of awareness was maddening. Every famous clinic in America-and more than a few overseas-had declared the opposite. The stroke that felled Sylvia had left her body alive and her mind forever beyond reach. The fact that she'd survived so long was a miracle.

"If you don't want her disturbed," Josh said evenly, "we should leave the room while we discuss this pseudo-historian you've hired."

"Nothing to discuss."

"I don't think this 'family history' is anything more than a scam."

"Doesn't matter what you think," Winifred said. "I hired her, it's my money, and that's that."

"That might have worked with the Senator, but it won't with me. As long as you're living on my ranch, you will at least be civil to me."

Winifred gave him a look from black eyes and touched Sylvia's hair gently. "It's not your ranch. It's hers. ''

Josh told himself not to lose his temper. He dealt with more difficult and more powerful people five times a day. And that's what he should be doing now-working as the governor of New Mexico, not dancing attendance on one madwoman and the ghostly remains of another woman who hadn't spoken in almost forty years. It was nearly impossible to think of that slack mass of skin and bones as alive, much less as his mother, but a politician didn't get anywhere speaking ill of a woman who hung on to life long past reason.

So long, so damned long. When will it end for her?

For all of us.

"I'm her guardian now," Josh said. "The ranch is part of my legal responsibility to her."

"Throwing me out won't win you any votes."

Wearily Josh shook his head and pulled at the tie he'd worn for a taped TV interview an hour ago. A waste of time, but the reporter worked for a well-known national paper and was solidly in the governor's camp for the coming election.

"Nobody said anything about throwing you out." Josh sighed as his collar button gave way. "The ranch has been your home for a long time. No matter what changes, I'll see that you're taken care of."

Winifred gave him a long, black look. It was the kind of look that had the more superstitious-or cautious-of the local people crossing themselves when she walked by.

"I'll hold you to that," she said finally.

"I'm hardly likely to forget," he said impatiently. "But there's a difference between having a roof over your head and running the ranch and the house according to your whim. Important people in my party have decided that I'm first-class presidential material. The primaries will be tough. The presidential campaign will be brutal. The last thing I need is a bright-eyed little outsider mucking around in the Quintrell past. Some things are better left buried."

"It's the Castillo past she'll be researching."

"One way or another, the Quintrells and the Castillos have been tangled up since before the Civil War." Josh's voice, like his expression, was impatient. His blue eyes were icy. "At least have the decency to wait until after the election in November. Then you can air the Senator's filthy laundry from hell to breakfast. But not now."

Handsome, angry, arrogant, he looked so much like the Senator that Winifred wanted to slap him. "I'm only interested in the Castillos. The Quintrells-all of them-can go straight to Satan where they belong."

"But until then, you don't mind living on the devil's generosity, do you?"

"It's the least you Quintrells owe me for taking care of Sylvia."

"Sylvia is a Quintrell."

"Not since that philandering son of a bitch broke her heart. Not since her first son died. Not since she went to make up with Liza and had a stroke. Not since you took over. She's Castillo now. Mine, not yours."

Josh shook his head and gave up. Winifred lived in the past. She always had. She always would. Nothing he said could change that. He turned and headed for the door. "If you don't keep a tight rein on your little historian, I will."

The door closed hard behind him.